Description

I have been trying to decide what it is that librarians do, and I see that the
traditional role of librarians has changed greatly. They are no longer merely the
custodians of shelves of dusty books, the shushers of small children, the sorters
of cards, and the extorters of fines from miscreant bookborrowers. If we examine
the full range of their activities, the only thing we can say is that they
help people get access to information, help people find new ways of enriching
their lives, and play a large role in community development. Some librarians
administer systems that serve these ends, which may be just another way of saying
that libraries, like universities, are cultural and educational institutions, and
those institutions may, in the long run, turn out to be among the heaviest users
of CATV.
Figure 1 is a picture of a CATV system, which I will explain somewhat
superficially. Over-the-air television signals are captured by the array of special
antennas, and are sent to the headend for processing or "cleaning up" the interference
is removed, the color balance is corrected, and all channels are brought
to the same level of strength. Other signals are delivered from distant cities by
microwave, and are processed in the same way.

Issue Date:

1973

Publisher:

Graduate School of Library Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Citation Info:

In C.E. Thomassen (ed). 1973. CATV and its implications for libraries : proceedings of a conference. Urbana, Il: Graduate School of Library Science: 3-12.